A Cruel End to a Brilliant Career

Popular YouTube movie critic channel Red Letter Media recently drew attention to a curious phenomenon: lately, Bruce Willis has “starred” in a slew of really bad, B-grade stinkers. By “starred”, as they pointed out, they meant the actor put in a few minutes of screen time. Minutes in which he seemed barely to care, or even be present.

In a follow-up video, they acknowledged fan criticism which pointed to rumours that Willis actually is suffering from an early-onset dementia and is simply banking what money he can before it’s too late.

Which, it seems, is indeed the case.

Action hero Bruce Willis, star of the Die Hard franchise, is to retire from acting due to an illness affecting his cognitive faculties, his family announced Wednesday.

As RLM acknowledged, watching the recent movies with that knowledge threw them into a whole new light. In particular, they pointed to the obvious earpiece that the actor fequently wore, as well as “performances” that seemed to be just robotically responding to prompts.

A post on Instagram signed by his family said Willis had developed aphasia – a language disorder that robs people of their ability to communicate.

“Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” read the post.

“As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”

Aphasia is typically caused by a stroke or head injury – though in more rare cases can come on gradually and progressively.

The condition affects a person’s ability not just to speak and understand verbal communication but also their reading and writing.

It’s a sad end to a solid career.

Willis has been a fixture on the small and large screen since the 1980s, coming to public prominence with the TV series Moonlighting.

But it was as hard-bitten hero John McClane in Die Hard that he became a bankable major star of the cinema, sparking a career that has generated billions of dollars of box office receipts.

Willis, who recently turned 67, provided the voice for the baby in the popular Look Who’s Talking, and showed his acting chops in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
But one of his best-known roles over the last few decades was as the dead person that child actor Haley Joel Osment could see in The Sixth Sense.

Willis won a Golden Globe and two Emmys during his career, but last weekend was the recipient of a far-less welcome honor – the Razzie for “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie,” a specially devised category.

The Australian

For my money, it’s as Corbyn Dallas in The Fifth Element that Willis will always be most memorable. He also shone in Terry Gilliam’s mind-bender Twelve Monkeys. To see him reduced to mumbling and bumbling his way through a motley slew of stinkers is just tragic. His motivation to stash as much away for his family as he could, while he could, is admirable.

But it might say a lot less for producers who were clearly, cynically prepared to exploit a fading star as he descended into mental fog.